"We're just trying to make observations about the types of interiors we lived in and bring them, transformed in icing, into this space," Cassandra Chilton told ABC Arts on site in the foyer of NGV Australia. "I think that a lot of people have lived in these houses that are a mash up of furniture, or have lived with other people, and have to bring their aesthetics together," she adds.

The installation, part of the NGV's Melbourne Now program, is entitled At Home With The Hotham Street Ladies. It features a dining room table stacked with dinner plates and leftovers, a lounge room complete with disused pizza boxes and a hallway with a nine-metre-long carpet runner. What makes the scenes unique is that all of the soft furnishings, leftovers and even the wallpaper have been handmade entirely from icing.

Share house living, domesticity and aspects of contemporary craft practice provide a rich source of inspiration for the five-member arts collective that take their name from a street in Collingwood where they all once lived. The Hotham Street Ladies "came together quite organically" reflects Sarah Parkes, "we made contribution cookbooks...we were invited to be in an exhibition and we made a cake replica of the Hotham Street house and then it sort of snowballed."

The group also has a reputation for attempting to subvert existing art forms by applying their share-house aesthetic. They have contributed edible graffiti to Melbourne's flourishing street-art scene and attempted to shake up the annual Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria cake decorating competition at the The Royal Melbourne Show with a half-decayed wedding cake, complete with maggots, and a pizza box with leftovers - all constructed from icing.

"We try to be subversive, but everything we make tends to end up looking quite pretty," adds Parkes.

Visitors to NGV Australia at Federation Square can watch the installation At Home With The Hotham Street Ladies as it is being made, until the exhibition launches on Friday 22nd of November.